National Security News

The Daily Signal provides reports on national and homeland security issues, including military readiness, intelligence operations, border protection, and global conflicts. Featuring news, analysis, and commentary, this section explores how security policy decisions affect America’s national defense and freedom.
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  • opinion

    Mizzou Proves That Americans Should Not Be Forced Into Racial Categories
    The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is, like all bureaucracies, humorless and unyielding—and it is no less so when it comes to balkanizing or fragmenting Americans. Employers must divide the workforce into racial and pseudo-ethnic groups, growls the EEOC, whether the workforce wants to be divided or not. Here’s a sample of their FAQs on the…
    Mike Gonzalez
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  • opinion

    Is a Defense Renaissance Around the Corner?
    Get ready for resurgence in planning the future of the American military. It’s long overdue. In fact, serious thinking about the “future force”—what America will need to assure national security in the face of foreseeable, emerging threats—has been largely lacking in the post-Reagan era. Thankfully, that seems to be changing. The Pentagon recently announced the…
    James Carafano
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  • opinion

    US Military Is Now Less Ready to Defend Our National Interests Than It Has Been for Decades
    The world’s an even scarier place than it was last year. From the Middle East to the South China Sea, the bad guys have grown stronger and bolder. Meanwhile, our allies and friends—suffering from economies much weaker than ours—are spending less and less on defense. This means less help available to us, if things go…
    Steven Bucci
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  • opinion

    What the Constitution Tells Us About How Senators Should Consider Obama’s Judicial Nominees
    What exactly is the Senate’s role of “Advice and Consent” when it comes to the nominations made by a president? It’s a topic of perpetual debate in Washington. One wrong-headed argument holds the role to be quite modest: Senators should defer to a president’s choices except in extreme circumstances. That position is advanced far too often by…
    Hans von Spakovsky
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  • opinion

    America’s Military Can’t Run on Wishful Thinking
    It seems fitting that the Heritage Foundation released its latest Index of U.S. Military Strength just before Halloween. It makes for some scary reading. It’s easy to assume that our military will always be prepared to not only defend our shores, but protect our allies and interests worldwide. Indeed, to suggest otherwise might seem unnecessarily pessimistic. But wishful…
    Ed Feulner
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  • opinion

    Obama’s Special Operations Policy: Useless and Dangerous
    No respectable historian will find much to admire in the president’s legacy as foreign policy and national security leader. Still, they may well bicker for many years over why he does what he does. The White House recently announced that special operations forces are going into harm’s way in Syria. That choice may be one of the defining…
    James Carafano
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  • opinion

    The Passing of Homeland Security Visionary Mike Wermuth
    This week, the homeland security community lost of one of its original architects. Michael Wermuth, whose contributions to the field began before 9/11 and continued for the past fifteen years, passed on Nov. 1 at age 69. When Mike joined the RAND Corporation in 1999, his first task was to serve as executive director of…
    Daniel Kaniewski
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  • opinion

    The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Is Still a Bad Idea
    Like the antagonist in a bad horror film, some ideas just won’t die. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is one of those ideas. The Senate refused to ratify the treaty back in 1999, the first time the Senate rejected a treaty since Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations. Still, Secretary of State John Kerry and…
    David Poortinga
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  • opinion

    What Last Night’s Election Results Prove About Social Conservatism and Voters
    Kim Davis confounded the pollsters and propelled an underdog candidate, Matt Bevin, to victory in the Kentucky governor’s race. Nearly two-thirds of voters in Ohio rejected marijuana. And citizens in Houston vetoed their city council and rejected a bad policy on sexual orientation and gender identity. Conventional wisdom is that social liberalism is an electoral…
    Ryan T. Anderson
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  • news

    The CIA’s Secret Himalayan Hotel for Tibetan Guerillas
    POKHARA, Nepal—It’s been 43 years since the CIA cut off support to the Tibetan guerillas that the agency trained and armed to fight a covert war against China. Yet, a monument to the CIA’s secret war in Tibet is still standing in Pokhara, Nepal. The former Hotel Mount Annapurna building sits on a quiet side…
    Nolan Peterson
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  • opinion

    The European Parliament is Wrong on Edward Snowden and National Security
    On Oct. 29, the European Parliament approved a resolution (passed by 285 votes to 281) calling “on European Union Member States to drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistleblower and international human rights defender.” The European…
    Nile Gardiner | Cully Stimson
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  • opinion

    Is US Military Strong Enough? As We Fight Terrorism, Military Isn’t What It Was During Cold War
    One of the very few things the federal government must do, per the U.S. Constitution, is protect our country and our national security interests. In fact, this is something that only the federal government can do. One of its primary tools to do so is the U.S. military and it spends a lot of money…
    Dakota Wood
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  • opinion

    Why a Registry for Drones Is Being Rushed by Aviation Officials
    Drones are flying off the shelf at a record pace. This holiday season, Americans are expected to buy 1 million drones. Drone manufacturers see sales measured in the billions. Federal officials, however, see nothing but danger. They look at this year’s record number of reports of near-collisions between passenger jets and drones, the encroachment of…
    Jason Snead
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  • opinion

    Missile Defense Essential for Countering Iranian Threat
    Recently, Iran conducted a successful test of a new precision-guided, long-range ballistic missile—dubbed “Emad.” This test is an outright violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2231, which states that “Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using…
    David Poortinga
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  • opinion

    New Study Shows Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide Increases Suicide Rates
    Does legalizing physician-assisted suicide lead to a drop in the suicide rate? As counterintuitive as it sounds, some advocates of assisted suicide have been making this argument. A new academic study, however, shows the reverse to be true: legalizing physician-assisted suicide increases the total number of people committing suicide. This debate heated up earlier this…
    Melody Wood | Ryan T. Anderson
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  • opinion

    The Army Is the Smallest It Has Been Since Before World War II, And Other Signs of the Military’s Decline
    The state of our military isn’t good. The Heritage Foundation released its 2016 Index of U.S. Military Strength today, and its findings are cause for concern. While potential adversaries have either grown more threatening or maintained their levels of aggressiveness, U.S. military strength continues to atrophy due to budget cuts and lack of prioritization from…
    Brian Slattery
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  • opinion

    Budget Deal Kicks the Can on Disability Insurance, Robs $150 Billion From Social Security
    The budget deal reached last night attempts to stave off depletion of the Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund at the end of 2016 by “reallocating” about $150 billion over the next three years from the Social Security Trust Fund to the Disability Insurance Trust Fund. This infusion of Social Security revenues should keep the disability…
    Rachel Greszler
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  • opinion

    Navy Conducts Successful Missile Defense Test
    Last week, off the coast of Scotland, the U.S. Navy conducted a successful test intercept of a ballistic missile target (video), the first live intercept of a ballistic missile in Europe. The Navy launched a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IA interceptor from the USS Ross as part of a joint exercise with eight U.S. allies. The…
    David Poortinga
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  • opinion

    Debunking Myths About Banks and the 2008 Financial Crisis
    Between now and the presidential election, we’ll be treated to all sorts of wonderful fables about what caused the 2008 financial crisis and the best way to prevent another one. Most of these stories will rehash the same old spin that we’ve been hearing for years. The biggest whopper concerns the Glass-Steagall Act, the 1933…
    Norbert Michel
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  • news

    After Shoring Up Support, Paul Ryan Is Officially Running for House Speaker
    Rep. Paul Ryan is officially in the race for speaker of the House. In a letter to his Republican colleagues Thursday night, Ryan, R-Wis., the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he’s “eager and ready to be our speaker.” Earlier this week, Ryan told House Republicans he would take the gavel only…
    Philip Wegmann
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